Day 20 Doover: STILL Not a Water Marble!

Doover: (DUUUver) smooshing-together of the words "do over". My kids hate getting back school papers that I tell them are doovers. After the stamp "marbling" fiasco, I decided I'd give water marbling another try. Oh, it was horrible. The agony! The ugliness! The mess! I think I figured out what's up, though. I swear to goodness, I think it's my dehumidifier!!!! Going to test that theory out in a couple days; I raised the indoor humidity level from 40% to 50%. We'll see...

In the meantime, I removed my two coats of Pure Ice white and the gunk from trying to water marble three nails at 10 pm Saturday night. I NEVER start doing my nails after 9:30, but I started all over after 10 o'clock and did these needle marble nails:

sunlight

crummy indoor shot

right thumb, one of my faves

 I used CG Fly, Pure Ice Hot Tamale, Wet 'n' Wild Bijou Blue, and NYC Purple Pizzazz Frost, which is not a frost but is actually a gorgeous deep purple-to-blue duochrome. All but Fly are the ones I'd wanted to use for the water marble, but I think this was pretty nice, too.

Oh, and then, OUCH! This is what happened the next morning:

 My first break since doing the treatment outlined at Nail Care HQ (but my own mix made from her recipe).

Here's a majorly overexposed shot of my nail after I repaired it with nail glue and a piece of silk wrap. I don't mind having to nubbinize because of a broken nail, but this one was into the quick, and I need it to grow out enough that I can cut it and still keep my finger protected! As long as I was doing that, I figured I'd just leave it the length it is for now...

Stamp "Marbling"

I have a love/hate relationship with water marbling. Some of the first nail art I ever did was water marbling, and I loved it. But the prep of taping around my nails is a pain in the butt, as is cleanup whether or not one chooses to tape off areas. I've heard others say applying cuticle oil to the skin around the nail helps w/ cleanup, but I'd end up getting it on my nail, I'm sure. When I did my birthday/Xmas mash-up I stumbled onto the idea of applying lip balm around my nail and all over that section of my finger up to the knuckle. I still had cleanup to do right around the nail, but the rest of the marbling "leftovers" gooped up and pretty much just wiped off my finger!

My other issue with water marbling is that I seem to have a difficult time getting the drops of polish to spread effectively. I know all about room temperature water, distilled v. tap, how some polishes will work and others won't... I just keep having the first few rings spread beautifully, and the inner few NOT spreading. Maybe I need to drop from a little higher up?!?!

So, any-who, I decided to be a big, fat CHEATER for Day 20: Water Marble and use my BM-320 plate to stamp a marble-esque design. I just don't feel the love for this one. I didn't when I used it here, either. And what's up with the fact that I chose such a similar color scheme this time? Grrr.

This time around, it's Kleancolor Metallic Fuchsia over an unnamed freebie from SillyLily. It's a milky white (or pale, pale pink?) jelly polish with fuchsia and turquoise hexes and teenies and white shards. It's not my favorite, requiring 3 coats for the milkiness to disguise the stains on my nails sufficiently, but that's just a personal pref.

sunlight

My thumbnail isn't jagged; I think the dabbing to get glitter where I wanted it gunked up parts of the tip more than others.

flash (and horrendous glare on my thumb)

The combination of guilt over cheating and my unhappiness with this look makes me want to attempt real water marbling tonight. We'll see... I did end up wearing this for three days, because 1) I wasn't going anywhere that I cared who saw it, and 2) all my kids loved this one. Little weirdies.

Purple Pinkies...in more ways than one!

OK, so it's really just two ways: pinky fingers and sort of pinky-purple polishes. Honestly, these are listed as purples, and I was surprised to find that layering Wet 'n' Wild Hannah Pinktana over Sinful Colors Purple Diamond actually made it more purple than it was before, not more pink. This was a good thing, because on me, at least, Purple Diamond looked pale pink. And China Glaze lists Flying Dragon as neon purple. Eh...maybe, sorta.  Whatevs. 

This is what I got for Day 6: Violet Nails: two coats of Purple Diamond, one coat of Hannah Pinktana, stamped with Flying Dragon using BM-320.  Can't find the pic taken with a flash. Oh well, it was crappy anyway.

sunlight

thumb, double stamped 

Sinful Colors Purple Diamond, Wet 'n' Wild Hannah Pinktana, China Glaze Flying Dragon

 See, they look PURPLE/VIOLET here!

Couple more blathering thoughts: I take photos of my left hand more often, not because I'm cheating and not doing my right, or b/c I suck so bad that I won't show my right hand mani. It's because I get this ugly patch of eczema on my right index finger every. flippin'. autumn/winter. Not nice to look at, certainly not in macro shots. So, not so many pics of my right hand floating around out there. Second blather: maybe it's because I'm FAT, I don't know, but although I LOVE my full-nail stamp images, I have a hard time getting the images all the way to the cuticle, and more so getting them all the way to both nail folds on each finger. I don't know if I've always had deep nail folds (having only taken up nail art 6 or so months ago), or if it comes with the territory here in Chubbo-land, like crappy curtains in a single-wide in South Congaree...but, there you have it.